Godzilla vs Kong is the first proper blockbuster release of 2021 and one that I have been looking forward to for nearly a year. When films are being released and charging £15.99, I generally wont pay and instead wait until it comes out on Netflix, Amazon or Sky without me having to pay an additional fee on top of what I already pay. However I decided to break this rule for Godzilla vs Kong. Bearing in mind that Zack Snyder’s Justice League was the best part of 4 hours (which it needed to be), it was interesting that this film is 1 hour and 53 minutes making it the shortest of the Monsterverse films beating Kong: Skull Island by 5 minutes.
I liked 2014’s Godzilla and also 2017’s Kong: Skull Island and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters which was ok but largely disappointing. I did have worries before I started watching this in wondering whether it was too soon to make this film but bearing in mind it was only four years between Iron Man and the first Avengers film, seven years seems like decent amount of time. The question was firstly going to be when were the main stars going to appear. Kong is seen straight away and Godzilla doesn't appear until 11 minutes. Interesting that we only had to wait about 40 minutes for the first encounter and it takes place at sea and it was quite good how it seemed to come out of nowhere.
The consistent complaint from these films is that they either don't appear in it enough or are in it too much which shows that you can't please everyone. Finding the perfect balance is important and in a two hour film I think there was plenty of Kong but not as much of Godzilla as many would like.
The early part of the film is to get Kong to the Hollow Earth and they spend so long that its quite amusing when Godzilla manages to fire his way there in mere seconds. When the fights between Kong and Godzilla were happening it was clear what was happening and with another director it would have been shaky cam and it would have been impossible to see what was going on but Wingard allows you to see whats happening. Also the lights on the building in the Hong Kong battle did help quite a lot for me. The film is called Godzilla vs. Kong and whilst you want to see them fight each other, too many times and it becomes boring so its fun when they throw in other monsters for them to fight. The final fight between Godzilla and Kong takes place in Hong Kong which whilst looking fun did make me wonder about the human death count cause there is no way that people got away uninjured.
The moment which did make me laugh was when Mecha-Godzilla was introduced. It did seem like something that had escape from Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise. The final final battle between Godzilla, Kong and Mecha-Godzilla was quite good to be fair and it was nice to see Godzilla and Kong sort of team up to battle Mecha-Godzilla. I don't think that some people will like the fact that there wasn't a clear winner but there is no way that Warner Bros is going to have a loser when there is so much money left to be made in these two properties.
Where this film doesn't work is the human characters. Madison’s storyline feels its there to give her something to do. Whenever her storyline which involved a podcaster with way too much time on his hands appeared on screen I just found myself really bored. Then in the Godzilla vs Mecha-Godzilla battle we are expected to believe that her friend can do something with a satellite to help. At least the stuff with Alexander Skarsgård although they made him seem like the villain for most of the film until Eiza González shows a bit of menace towards the end of her involvement. Speaking of González, I thought that whilst she was good the character seemed a bit weak and predictable in her motives. Its worth mentioning Kaylee Hottle who is really good in this film although all she does is do sign language with Kong. Her character seems to be the only human with a reasonable storyline. Kyle Chandler does nothing in this film except collect a paycheck because he appears when he is having a conversation with Brown’s Madison and then for a large portion of the film he disappears and then returns and then he doesn't do anything.
I enjoyed Godzilla vs Kong, it didn't disappoint which was something that I was worried about in the run up to this film. I dont think its a perfect film and if there are future films in the series then they will trim the Billie Bobby Brown character because this is two films in which we serves very little purpose in the film. The plot is rather simplistic but I liked that and thought that it meant we could get what we wanted which was a straight forward blockbuster with two huge (literally) names fighting each other.